The Salesforce ecosystem is a powerful tool, and there are so many moving parts that finding the right mix of services to optimize your instance and bring your business to the next level requires the optimal mix of experts. At RadialSpark, recently partnered with SitRep Digital, a marketing automation powerhouse, to ensure that we have skilled resources to apply to all aspects of our client’s projects.

During the discovery process, we often find that our clients have not yet thought about automating their marketing processes or believe that their current solution is “good enough.” Jason Bithos, the CEO of SitRep Digital took a little time out to explain to us exactly what prevents businesses from automating marketing, how SitRep overcomes those challenges and the benefits of full-scale marketing automation.

Facing and Overcoming Marketing Automation Challenges

So what stops companies from taking the automation leap when it comes to marketing? “Often it’s the fear of change or simply having a system that works just well enough that it’s useful. But in reality, it’s hardly functioning anywhere near capacity,” Bithos says. Operating at less than full capacity is leaving money on the table. You know that for every hour a machine on the floor is down, the business is losing X amount of dollars. Are you viewing missed marketing opportunities in the same light? You should be.

To ease the transition into your ideal marketing automation scenario, the team at SitRep Digital breaks the project into phases. This gives both you and your teams the opportunity to learn at each step of the rollout. “Start small. End BIG,” Bithos says.

“Businesses that use marketing automation to nurture prospects experience a 451% increase in qualified leads.” ~ The Annuitas Group

Maximize ROI with Marketing Automation

Marketing automation takes your sales and marketing teams out of the Sherlock Holmes role so that they can get back to building campaigns and selling products. Without marketing automation, these teams are spending their days (and nights) nurturing leads, building segmentation, and tracking down new leads.

“61% of B2B marketers send all leads directly to sales; however, only 27% of those leads will be qualified.”~ MarketingSherpa

Marketing automation allows businesses to set all of this to happen automatically based on what we know about your audience and their behavior. For example, if we know that customer A bought a blue t-shirt and a blue hat we can thank him for his order and then send out a deal on a blue bag and blue jacket.

Perhaps we know that customer B does not respond to email, but she is very active on social media. Instead of filling her inbox with emails that are never opened, let’s send push notifications to alert her to new products as soon as they are released.

We can even set up look-a-like buyers based on your current customer bases’ social media friends and segment prospective buyers based on the number of emails they have opened and how they have interacted with the brand or many other factors.

“Marketing automation drives a 14.5% increase in sales productivity and a 12.2% reduction in marketing overhead.” ~ Nucleus Research

Marketing automation tears down the barriers between sales and marketing teams. When SitRep Digital approaches a new client, they often find that both the sales team and the marketing team are approaching the same groups of leads but doing it in completely different ways. Not only does this present an inconsistent image to your prospects but it also costs the business productivity.

“We often find that all of the data needed to be successful is there, but the two groups are not sharing it. Marketing automation breaks down those silos,” Bithos says. “The biggest ROI opportunities are about more than just acknowledging a ‘thumbs up.’” It is in identifying new ways to capture leads.

Bringing Marketing Automation to Your Business

To realize the greatest ROI impact, start by mapping out your current customer journeys. How does the sales team follow-up when a prospect interacts with the brand? What is your marketing team doing to generate new business? Understanding how business is getting done today is critical to building an optimized marketing automation process. “Do not apply automation to an inefficient process,” Bithos says.

In an ideal scenario, marketing and business strategy should be planned a year at a time so that the firm can begin reverse engineering to the place they want to be at the end of the year. When the process, the plan, the data, and the business’ reputation are clean and healthy, the right marketing automation implementation can exponentially increase ROI.

However, “you cannot jump on a tool and expect it to run itself,” Bithos says. The support of your solution is critical. “Know your team. Just because they are an IT expert does not make them a quality marketer,” Bithos says. The right support during implementation and training gives your current team the skills needed to maintain the day-to-day internally.

The team at SitRep Digital is more than just your technology solution. They also come with the marketing and business knowledge necessary to identify areas of improvement and show you how to make those improvements while integrating automation.

“84% of top performing companies are using or plan to start using marketing automation between 2012 and 2015.” ~ Gleanster

For medium and large-size businesses, marketing automation is no longer a “someday dream.” According to Gartner Research, by 2020, customers will manage 85% of their relationships without talking to a human. Just keeping up with the expectations of your customers will require automation. Bridging the gap between your business processes and marketing efforts ensures that you prepared for the future, that your ROI is maximized, and that your customers are receiving positive and consistent brand interactions.